What to know about the warrants most immigration agents use to make arrests

As the Trump administration intensifies immigration enforcement nationwide, a wave of high-profile arrests — many unfolding at private homes and businesses and captured on video — pushed one legal question to the center of the national debate: When can federal immigration agents lawfully enter private property to make an arrest?

Most immigration arrests are carried out under administrative warrants, internal documents issued by immigration authorities that authorize the arrest of a specific individual but do not permit officers to forcibly enter private homes or other nonpublic spaces without consent. Only criminal warrants signed by judges carry that authority.

Legal experts say the administration's aggressive enforcement push, combined with public awareness of those limits, is increasingly turning door-knock encounters into flashpoints, fueling confrontations.

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Private property

All law enforcement operations — including those conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — are governed by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects all people in the U.S. from unreasonable searches and seizures. That requires law enforcement to have a warrant before searching private property or arresting someone, regardless of immigration status.

However, not all warrants are the same. Typically, arrests carried out by Department of Homeland Security agencies are authorized by administrative warrants — sometimes known as immigration warrants — not judicial warrants.

Judicial warrants are issued by a court and signed by a magistrate or a state or federal judge. They allow a relevant law enforcement agency to apprehend a specified individual in any context — regardless of whether the person is on public or private property. In other words, law enforcement is legally allowed to enter and search a home or business to make the arrest without the consent of the property owner once a judge signs off on the arrest.

By contrast, the administrative warrants used in most immigration operations are sanctioned by an agency, officer or immigration judge, and don't allow law enforcement to forcibly enter private property to detain someone. People can legally refuse federal immigration agents entry into private property if the agents only have an administrative warrant.

There are limited exceptions, some of which include if someone is in immediate danger, an officer is actively chasing a suspect or if someone is calling for help inside the residence. Those exceptions don't apply in routine immigration arrests, legal experts say.

John Sandweg, a former ICE acting director, said officers are trained on what circumstances legally justify forced entry. But as the scope of ICE's work expanded, and more border agents began to conduct the work of ICE officers, there is a greater chance that agents will misapply the rules, he said.

"Your risks of all of these types of incidents increase dramatically when you take officers out of their normal operating environment and ask them to do things that they have not been trained to do, because it's not part of their core missions," Sandweg said.

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Mounting tensions

The legal distinction between the warrants came to the fore when immigration law enforcement raided a private home Jan. 11 to make an arrest in Minneapolis, after clashing with protesters who confronted the heavily armed agents. Documents reviewed by The Associated Press revealed that the agents only had an administrative warrant — meaning no judge authorized the raid on private property.

When asked, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin didn't provide a legal justification for the forced entry and arrest of the man, who is a Liberian national with a deportation order from 2023. She said his arrest was part of the administration's efforts to arrest "the worst of the worst" and said he had a criminal history of "robbery, drug possession with the intent to sell, possession of a deadly weapon, malicious destruction and theft."

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McLaughlin didn't specify whether he was convicted of crimes or if his arrest was related to criminal activity.

Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, said she couldn't comment on that specific raid, but said generally an officer entering a home without consent or permission could result in serious consequences.

"That is not just an illegal arrest. It's numerous illegal actions by the officer themselves that could open up liability, not just for being sued, but potential criminal actions under state law as well," she explained.

In the current political climate, she said, it isn't clear if there are any realistic avenues for accountability since the federal government would be responsible for investigating such a breach.

"There are layers of federal laws and regulations and policies prohibiting this kind of behavior. But then the second layer is: Is the federal government going to impose consequences?" she said.

A rule of evidence called the exclusionary rule prohibits the use of illegally obtained evidence in criminal court, but most often that rule does not apply in immigration court, Altman explained. Any consequences that the officer may face would probably not undo the immediate consequences immigrants could face if they are quickly deported after an illegal arrest.

"As those legal challenges come and people are facing very, very quick detentions and deportations on the basis of these illegal arrests, there's very little recourse in actual immigration court proceedings that allows people to have a judge disregard evidence or the actual arrest, even if it was done in this very violent, illegal manner," she said.

Rights campaigns

ICE long relied on "knock and talks" to make apprehensions, informally requesting residents to leave a home without giving an indication they plan to make an immigration arrest. As outlined in a 2020 lawsuit in which a federal judge found the practice illegal, officers tell their targets they need them to step outside to answer a few questions.

In response, activists, lawyers and local governments launched "know-your-rights" campaigns around the country, attempting to educate people on the legal nuances of the extremely convoluted legal framework that is supposed to govern immigration law enforcement.

Many groups published fact sheets and infographics on social media, while others facilitate meetings that go over constitutional protections that immigrants have — regardless of legal status — in interactions with federal agents.

Often groups will instruct immigrants to request to see a warrant before opening the door if an immigration officer knocks. The trainings also typically emphasize that an immigrant can refuse to open the door if law enforcement only has an administrative warrant.

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